Guest Column / Rick Wallace

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Along the PCH

Malibu schools were a part of the Santa Monica Unified School District from 1952 to 1980 before Malibu was added to the name of the district.

Crazy Horse Saloon hours during the eighties: 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. But that was just the food part. I seem to recall the saloon part went longer into the night.

The Malibu Historical Society has advanced little in recent years, but the Pepperdine University Payson Library is picking up the slack to preserve old records and documents of our fair town. They have begun by collecting and organizing every issue ever published by The Malibu Times and Malibu Surfside News. Their library may become the ideal central location for future historians to review the rich past of our town. If you can donate rare books, historical photos, diaries, correspondence, maps or anything that helps tell the story of Malibu, contact Melissa Nykanen, head of Special Collections and University Archives, at 310.506.4434.

If you like doing the half-mile walk or jog around Malibu Bluffs Park, remember that you can supplement your exercise with the full loop around the grasslands just to the west. Access the trail off the main parking lot and do an additional mile, which returns two different ways back to the park.

Frederick Hastings Rindge bought all of the Malibu Rancho in 1891, at the age of 34 (he would live only 14 more years). He was the last survivor of six children born to a wealthy Massachusetts family. When he bought Malibu, he was living in a large home at Ocean Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard (across the street from the current-day Fairmont Hotel). Wilshire at that time was named Nevada, snuggled between California and Arizona streets. Santa Monica Boulevard was originally Oregon.

Moonshadows has been “Moonshadows” for nearly 40 years and a Los Angeles landmark at that. But it was not always the so-named. Previously, that location was named Big Rock Beach Cafe and, before that, Canfield’s Cafe.

Thirty-five years in Malibu and still not a single speeding ticket on the highway. How lucky am I?

Scariest sight in Malibu: a large brush fire approaching. Malibu’s scariest sound: a pack of howling coyotes surrounding and attacking their prey in our local foothills.

The final configuration of house numbers for all of Malibu’s streets was created in 1951. It was that year that the local post office added the first post office boxes.

The first residents of Malibu West, Frank & Maxine Millington, moved into their Frondosa house in February, 1963. There were 52 homes built in the first phase, with 49 more planned at the time in the back of the canyon and 60 more on the slopes of the upper mesa. It was Malibu’s first, and only, mid-century tract of ranch homes that are now in much favor.

During the hey-day of local sports fishing, the Aquarius and Lenbrooke were stationed at the Malibu Pier (until it was sold from the county to the state in 1980) and the Gentleman and Speed Twin were launched from Paradise Cove.

It is again possible to buy a two-bedroom condo in Malibu for less than $400,000. At one time, $600,000 was about as low as they went.

Scanning old copies of The Malibu Times, it appears there was plenty of social activity in Malibu in the 1950s. Frequent were the events conducted by the churches in town, as well as the Township Council, Chamber of Commerce, Riders Club and service organizations. Meanwhile, some of the dining opportunities of the time: the Malibu Plaza Cafe (now the La Costa Post Office site), Trancas Restaurant, the Rendezvous (last known as Windsail) with the Adlon Malibu Cottage next door (PierView). There was the Jim Dandy Snack Bar (at the old Something’s Fishy site near Topanga), the Las Flores Inn (Duke’s), the aforementioned Big Rock Cafe, the Holiday House (Geoffrey’s) and the Malibu Seacomber across the street from the Rendezvous.

For the half of you who did not already vote absentee – remember to vote on Tuesday!